


Grey Force

by AnonymousTheThird



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: AU where the prophecy about Anakin actually makes sense, Ahsoka Tano-centric, Alien Biology, Alien Mythology/Religion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Ahsoka Tano, BDSM, Bisexual Ahsoka Tano, Bisexual Anakin Skywalker, Canon Disabled Character, Complicated Relationships, Dom/sub, F/F, F/M, Femdom, Fix-It, Gray Force User(s), Gray Jedi, Gray Jedi Ahsoka Tano, M/M, Multi, Mustafar (Star Wars), NSFW sections marked, Pegging, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vaginal Fingering, all characters are consenting adults, chapter count is an estimation and may not reflect actual story length, relationships and characters tags to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26510053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousTheThird/pseuds/AnonymousTheThird
Summary: When Rebel agent Ahsoka Tano is sent to Ando Prime to locate a potential holocron, she gets more than she bargained for - not only in the form of a friend she had thought dead who is now her greatest enemy, but the holocron itself contains knowledge that drastically challenges Ahsoka's understanding of the Force as it was taught to her by the Jedi Order. The revelation leads her to seek training from the person she both hates and loves most - her old Master, Darth Vader.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano/Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker/Ahsoka Tano, Barriss Offee/Ahsoka Tano, Kalifa/Ahsoka Tano (one-sided; previous), Lux Bonteri/Ahsoka Tano (one-sided; previous), Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala/Anakin Skywalker (previous), Steela Gerrera/Ahsoka Tano (one-sided; previous)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 101





	1. An Icy Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> Confession time: I haven't actually seen Rebels yet. Or finished the last season of Clone Wars. If this fic is full of inaccuracies do NOT @ me. Just pretend it's intentional and part of the AU.
> 
> On an unrelated note, I'd like to take this moment to thank wookieepedia.org.

Ahsoka had been warned about the freezing temperatures of Ando Prime, and yet somehow the force of the icy blast that met her when the door of her ship slid open was still a shock. She shivered, and pulled her hood further up. She had always been sensitive to the cold – Togruta, as a species, were evolved for temperate to tropical grasslands – and yet she always managed to forget this fact when not faced with it. Oh well. It wouldn’t be so bad once she had acclimatised to it in a few minutes.

Still, looking around the snow-covered ground before her, dotted with low-growing plant life, it was difficult to believe that she wasn’t all that far from the planet’s equator. And yet, the planet was still fairly well-populated, not just by the native Talid inhabitants, but also by other species who had come in with the boom of the mining corporations. It was the mining that had brought her here – Rebel informants had received intel that not long ago, one of these operations had unearthed what they had described, rather agitatedly, as a “haunted temple.” The mining site had quickly been abandoned, leaving the area devoid of people or sound.

The temple wasn’t haunted, though. Probably not. By the reports, it sounded more likely that the miners had set off the defence mechanisms of an ancient holocron – a very powerful and well-guarded one, at that. And so Rebel Agent “Fulcrum” had been dispatched post-haste to recover it before the Empire got its hands on it.

She didn’t have much time. Intel reported that the area surrounding the site for several kilometres brought about technological malfunctions, and so she would have to cover the area on foot. With luck, the malfunctions were limited to transport vehicles, and her holographic locator would be unaffected. She couldn’t afford to spend any more time out here than she needed to.

There was a light snow beginning to fall as she set off. Hopefully, it would hide her tracks from enemies.

*

The Force was strong here. There was no doubt about that. While this definitely supported the holocron theory, it revealed little else about the situation. Was it a Jedi holocron or a Sith holocron? Most likely, that would become clearer as she got closer, but for the time being it was still a mystery.

There was something else here, too. Something familiar and shrouded in the Dark Side. She couldn’t pinpoint where she knew it from, but she was on her guard.

It turned out to be a good instinct. Up ahead, something was coming into view through the snow. She moved silently towards it, ducking behind bushes, boulders and rises, until she could get a good view.

It was a private imperial vessel, and from the looks of it, it had narrowly avoided a crash landing. Ahsoka smirked, thinking smugly back to her own careful landing outside of the holocron’s danger zone. Then she caught sight of who had disembarked from the ship, and her blood ran cold.

Darth Vader was standing in the snow, flanked by two Inquisitors. The Sith Lord who had helped bring down the Republic, on that fateful day when nearly everyone she had ever loved had died – who had killed so many Jedi and Rebels – was standing a matter of meters away from her. Her head swam and there was a sickly feeling in her stomach, as she crouched down, gasping for breath. After a moment, she gained control of herself again, and realised that she was speaking. Cautiously, she peered back out, listening intently.

“There’s no obvious explanation for the malfunction,” Vader said, his voice weirdly distorted by his helmet. “I suspect it is the influence of the holocron.”

“We’ve never come across a holocron that could do something like that,” one of the Inquisitors said, glancing at the other. “What makes you say so, Lord Vader?”

“The Force feels strange here,” Darth Vader said. “I’ve never–”

He stopped suddenly, and Ahsoka felt a chill run through her.

“Someone is here,” he said, and then he turned to look directly at her.

She jumped to her feet and drew her sabres, scanning the terrain for an escape. The Inquisitors were on her, however – there wasn’t enough time to run. So she blocked their strikes, parried, darted, lunged – one of them made a swipe at her head, and she ducked out of the way of the blade, moved again. They were good – warriors trained in the Dark Side of the Force; trained to use lightsabres; trained to kill Jedi – but Ahsoka was better. Eventually, one of them made a misstep, slipped on a patch of ice hidden beneath the snow – and in a flash, they went down. Now there was only one of them, and Ahsoka moved forward, driving them backwards, until they met with the side of the ship. A slash, and they were disarmed. Another, and they dropped to the ground dead.

She turned then, to face her final assailant. All through her fight with the Inquisitors, Darth Vader had remained strangely distant, watching but never once coming in for an attack. Now, he continued to regard her, silent except for the sound of his heavy breathing. She kept her gaze on him, ready to receive an attack. Finally, his sabre unsheathed in a flash of red, and he approached her slowly, with purpose.

He was better than the Inquisitors – better than her, too. Fortunately, she retained one advantage – his movements, though powerful, were slower and less flexible, thanks to his rigid body suit. Ahsoka, on the other hand, was fast and agile, and so the fight was evenly matched. All the same, Ahsoka found herself being pushed backwards, away from the ship.

There was something strangely familiar about the experience as well. It occurred to Ahsoka then, in the middle of that fight, that it was Vader’s presence she had recognised earlier. How? Though she recognised him well enough, she had certainly never met him before, had she?

Unless, perhaps, he was someone she had known before. The possibility that the Jedi Killer had once been someone known to her within the Order had passed her mind before, but it was so distressing to her that she had refused to ponder it in depth. She remembered Maul’s warning, regarding her old master, that Darth Sidius intended to use him as his weapon. She had dismissed them, of course – Anakin would never have turned to the Dark Side, would he?

Anakin…

Ahsoka took a few steps back, sabres still drawn and at the defensive, but her eyes were wide, and she was breathing heavily, a growing horror inside of her.

“Anakin?” she asked quietly.

Darth Vader stopped in his tracks, as though he too was only now having the same realisation.

“Ahsoka,” he said.

Ahsoka looked inside herself, reaching deep down to try and makes sense of the emotional response she was having to the situation, and what she found was fury.

With a cry, she lunged at Vader, slashing and stabbing with reckless abandon. Vader actually stumbled backwards for a moment, before moving to block her attacks. There were tears in Ahsoka’s eyes – fortunately, she didn’t need to see. She did need a clear head, though, and so after several minutes she moved out of combat again, and stopped, taking in deep breaths to calm herself while she blinked the tears out of her eyes, and waited for Vader’s next move.

A cracking sound was the only warning Ahsoka got. One instant, she and her former master were locked eye to eye, and the next, the ground gave out beneath them, and they both went tumbling into darkness.

*

Ahsoka’s head was pounding, and her body ached. She forced her eyes open, and tried to make sense of her surroundings.

She was in a stone tunnel, lying amidst a pile of rubble. High above her she could see the distant glimmer of daylight from the hole she had fallen through. There was no way she would be able to get back out the way she came. As she gathered her senses, however, she realised she wouldn’t need to. This tunnel must have been part of the abandoned mine she had come to investigate. All she would have to do was follow it until she found the temple.

Slowly, she got to her feet. Nothing felt broken – only sore from the fall. It was a miracle she wasn’t more badly hurt. Looking around, she spotted her lightsabres lying on the ground. She also saw–

“Vader,” Ahsoka said quietly.

He was lying on the ground too, not far away. For a split second, Ahsoka wondered with horror if he were dead – but she could hear that steady, rhythmic breathing fill the darkness. She retrieved her lightsabres, and drew them, pointing one of them at the Sith Lord.

And there she stood, for several long minutes, before finally accepting that she couldn’t deliver the blow, and lowered her hand. Instead, she moved to walk down the stone hallway, in the direction she felt the Force strongest. But she only made a few steps before she stopped, let out a sigh, and looked back towards where Vader lay on the ground.

It _was_ Anakin, then. She knew it was. Now that she’d accepted it, she recognised the feel of him perfectly, however twisted with rage and darkness it might be. She had assumed he had died. She had hoped he had died. For all the times she’d missed him, yearned so desperately for the chance to have him back, she wished now that he _had_ died. This was so much worse, so much worse.

And yet, she found she couldn’t leave him. It was stupid. Once he returned to consciousness, he would likely strike her down where she stood. But this was _Anakin_. Her master. Her companion. Her dearest friend. She loved him fiercely – or she had, once. She didn’t know now. But she had to at least talk to him, try to make sense of what had happened.

And so, she waited there in the darkness of the Ando Prime mines for Darth Vader to wake up.

It was a few more minutes before he stirred. He sat up, and looked over at her, twin sabres still drawn at her sides.

“Are you going to strike me down?” he asked. It was hard to tell through the mask, but he might have been teasing her.

“I might yet,” Ahsoka said. Her voice was devoid of humour. She wanted him to know she meant business. “Are _you_?”

“I might yet,” he said. She almost killed him on the spot.

Now that she had him there, she found she had no idea what to say to him. So many questions swarmed in her head. A simple “why?” or “how could you?” probably wouldn’t cut it.

“You’re here for the holocron,” was all that came out after several seconds of silence.

“I take it you are as well,” Darth Vader said. “And I suppose you won’t simply let me have it?”

“So you can use its power to increase the might of your empire?” Ahsoka said in disgust. “You’ll have to kill me.”

He contemplated that in silence for a moment. Ahsoka refused to be intimidated.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that we are both looking for the same thing, and until we find it, we share a common goal.”

Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at that. There was a trick in here, somewhere. He wanted to use her for something.

“It will do us no good to kill the other if we cannot survive the holocron’s defences alone,” Darth Vader continued. “And since this one is clearly unlike any others we have found before, it is a distinct possibility that alone, we won’t.”

There was more to it than that, she knew it. But more time with Vader would allow her more time to get answers. So, ever on her guard, she nodded, returned her right lightsabre to her belt, and extended her hand. He regarded it cautiously, then accepted it, and she pulled him to his feet.

*

They walked together in tense silence for what felt like hours, following the twists and turns of the tunnels, the only light coming from the white glow of Ahsoka’s sabres. Whenever they came to a fork or a crossroads, they felt for the direction where the force was strongest, and took it. Even so, the mines felt labyrinth-like, and the directions were guesses more often than Ahsoka would like to admit.

It was then that things began to get weird. Just when the silence was beginning to become unbearable, Ahsoka heard it: a voice from somewhere within the tunnels calling her name.

“ _Ahsoka?_ ”

She froze in her tracks. Her eyes darted around her surroundings, but the tunnels were just as empty as before, deserted except for herself and Darth Vader, who was regarding her quizzically.

“Did… did you hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?” Vader asked.

Ahsoka listened intently, straining her ears against the oppressive silence of the caves. For a long moment, she heard nothing more. But then, there it was again.

“ _Ahsoka!_ ”

The voice echoed down the tunnel, clearer and louder than before, but more desperate. And she trembled. She knew that voice. It was Anakin’s voice.

“It’s just the holocron,” she said shakily. “It’s trying to distract me.”

She started walking again, and once Vader accepted that he would be getting nothing else out of her, he followed.

They had only taken a few more steps when Vader turned his head sharply towards her and said, “Yes?”

“Huh?” Ahsoka replied involuntarily.

“Did you say something?” Vader asked.

“No?”

“I could have sworn I heard you–” he began, and then cut off. “Ah.”

“What did you hear?” Ahsoka asked. She had a sinking feeling she already knew.

“Your voice,” he said, “calling my name.”

Ahsoka clenched her fists around the hilt of her lightsabres, avoiding his gaze and picking up her pace. “Let’s keep moving. I don’t want to spend any more time in here than I have to.”

“You refuse to speak to me,” Vader said.

“What is there to say?” she said bitterly.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

“Disappointed you missed one?”

“No. It’s a relief to know that you survived. I should have expected it – if anyone could have survived, it would be you.”

“No thanks to the efforts of your Inquisitorius.”

“If you won’t have a conversation with me,” Vader said, “will you at least let me speak?”

“Why should I? You killed innocent people! You aided the rise to power of a tyrant! The galaxy lives in fear of you, and the regime you implemented! You can’t possibly believe you’re on the right side in this, can you?”

“There’s no more war,” Vader said. “Politicians are cooperating with one another. Is this not better than the world we left behind?”

“To live in fear is no life at all,” Ahsoka said. “And I feel like you’re still avoiding the subject of all the people who, you know, _died_.”

“Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good,” Vader said. “Your rebel insurgence is the one disrupting the peace, not us.”

“My _rebel insurgence_ is the one protecting the rights of the people from _your_ dictatorship. _Your_ threat of conformity or death.”

“Allow me one opportunity to make my case to you,” Vader said.

“Oh, I see now,” Ahsoka said, laughing humourlessly. “That’s why you really agreed to accompany me. So you could have the opportunity to recruit me for the Empire.”

“I could be your master again.”

“What, you want the honour of being assassinated by me in the grand tradition of Sith apprentices killing their masters?” Ahsoka said sarcastically.

“I want you to realise your full potential,” Vader said. “To embrace the Dark Side. And… I want you back at my side. The Jedi Order never understood you. They shunned you, just as they shunned me. But you don’t need them. They were holding you back. I know you, Ahsoka. You belong somewhere your power can truly grow. Somewhere you can embrace your passions, use them to enhance your skill. I can feel your rage. I’ve seen firsthand what you can do when you’re driven by it. I’m… sorry it’s directed at me, but if that is how it must be for you to understand, then so be it.

“Join me. Become the force user you were always destined to be. The Sith can provide you with what you need, as can the Empire.”

A long moment of silence hung between them, as Ahsoka stood there, ordering her thoughts. She knew she would only get one chance to answer this, and when she did, she wanted to say as much as she could.

“You’re right,” she said at last, evenly. “I had no place among the Jedi. Their philosophy of complete detachment was something I could never reconcile with their values of love and justice. My only regret in leaving the Order was abandoning you, since _clearly_ you lost all your marbles in my absence.” She allowed a small, sad smile to touch her lips at that. “I’m – I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you needed me most. Really, truly I am. I love you, Anakin, and I miss you terribly. These last few years have been hell without you. And I want you to know, most sincerely, that I would do almost anything in the world to have you back in my life.”

She took a deep breath, and continued.

“But there is nothing – _nothing_ – that you, or anyone, can do that will make me join the Empire.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Darth Vader said – and to his credit, he really sounded it – as he drew his lightsabre.

It was then that the earth around them began shaking. There was no warning – the tremor was sudden and powerful. Ahsoka stumbled backwards as large chunks of the passageway began to cave in, sealing the space between the two of them. It was short. Intense. Deliberate. Ahsoka didn’t wait around for Vader to make his way through to her, or to consider the unnatural specifics of the quake. She turned and sprinted down the tunnel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently Ando Prime is pronounced "Ando Preem." Wild!


	2. The Holocron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had this chapter already written when the first one went up! So don't get too excited, it'll still be at least a couple days before ch.3. I have literally nothing else going on in my life right now.

She couldn’t have been far from the temple now, Ahsoka thought. She could feel the focal point of the strange Force phenomenon growing closer. The passageway was growing wider, and a few times she came to points where two or three tunnels converged into the direction she was heading. Suddenly, she stopped, and very cautiously, turned off her lightsabres. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but once they had, she realised that her suspicions had been correct – there was a pale light up ahead. Grinning, she returned her sabres to their place on her belt, and dashed towards it.

The tunnel finally stopped at the entrance to a great cavern, the roof of which opened up to the grey sky, from which a few lazy snowflakes were falling, leaving a thin layer of white on the rock floor. And there, almost directly across from her, she could see the half-excavated face of a grand, alien building, its entranceway open and gaping.

The passageway wasn’t at floor level, but there was scaffolding standing against the wall of the cavern, left behind when the mining operation was suddenly deserted. A couple dexterous leaps and she landed on the ground with a light thud.

But the ground she landed on was not the rocky, snow-sprinkled floor of the mine. Instead, the sound that resonated from the impact was metallic. The cold was gone, the air was stale, and instead of the still silence that had surrounded her moments before, the place she was now was filled with the thuds of running feet and the cries of soldiers.

She was on the captain’s deck of a Republic war ship, and there was a battle raging outside – she could see the flashes of lasers and the fiery explosions of downed crafts. Her heart hammered in her chest and her eyes went wide as she gazed helplessly at the destruction and death around her.

No. Ahsoka closed her eyes tight, shutting out the vision.

“This isn’t real,” she muttered, “this isn’t real.”

She stood there, perfectly still, whispering those words over and over again, until the temperature abruptly dropped, and the world went silent. She was back in the cavern of the mine, and still shaking, but safe.

The cryptic voices of people you loved calling your name, the flashbacks to painful moments of your past – if this was what everyone experienced, it was no wonder the people had thought this mine was haunted. The holocron seemed to be playing with her, finding exactly which person or memory would be the most painful at that moment, and using it to… what? Scare her off? The thought that this was the holocron’s goal was deeply annoying to Ahsoka. She stood up straight, and looked directly at the temple doorway.

“You don’t frighten me,” Ahsoka declared defiantly, and started walking forward.

Again, the world around her changed, and she was on a battlefield, moving directly towards an approaching army of droids. They fired at her, but she ignored them, staying on her course. As she expected, the blasts did nothing, and when she finally met the droids themselves, she moved right through them.

The scenes kept changing – the mines for a few steps, and then into some far-off location from her past. Ahsoka ignored all of it and kept moving. Even when a chasm opened up before her, and she could hear the distant scuttling of creatures within, she kept walking forward, moving directly over it like she was walking on air.

Her mind wandered back to Anakin, probably still somewhere in the tunnels. A more sadistic side of her nature hoped that he was facing visions like these of his own; hoped especially that they were about her.

Suddenly, she was at the temple opening. She paused there for a moment, taking in a deep breath, expecting to face the worst of the holocron’s attempts to frighten her off yet. But when she began to move forward, nothing happened. She took three, five, ten steps into the darkness, waiting for another vision to overtake her, until finally accepting that they were over. So she let the breath out, and looked around, peering into the gloom.

And there it was. Ahsoka knew she was looking at the holocron the moment she saw it, even though what she saw looked nothing like any holocron she had come across yet. It was a stellated dodecahedron, and it glowed a pale purple colour from where it sat in the wall to her left.

She reached out a hand, and tentatively used the Force to pull the object towards her. It came without hesitation, as though it had already decided to give itself to her. It would have been unnerving, if she weren’t far past ready for this mission to be over.

As soon as the holocron touched the skin of Ahsoka’s hand, a low whirring sound started from outside the temple. She tensed, expecting another of the holocron’s tricks, but to her relief it was the sound of some of the abandoned mining equipment coming back to life. She smiled, and flipped on her locator, which reacted instantaneously, giving her a clear map of the whole area and her location within it.

The climb out of the cavern was more boring than anything, as was the trek back to the ship. She didn’t mind. After everything she had been through that day, boring was a welcome change. She kept her senses sharp, scanning her surroundings for any black specks among the snow that might have been Sith Lords – but all specks were only rocks and shrubbery. She wondered if Anakin was alright – it seemed strange that she hadn’t run into him again. Certainly he couldn’t have died back in those tunnels, could he? No – no her senses told her he was fine. That shouldn’t have been a relief to her at this point, but it was.

Still, she had to be absolutely certain she wouldn’t have him following her back to Rebel Base. So when she got back to the ship, she set the coordinates for the sandiest planet she could think of in the region, and headed there for an overnight stop.

*

**[NSFW section]**

_Anakin was there with her when she fell asleep. Ahsoka threw her arms around him, running her fingers through his hair, feeling his skin against hers. She breathed in sharply as she felt his lips press against her neck, and shivered as his hands ran down her lower back._

_She had missed him so much she felt it like a physical weight inside her chest. The pain was still there, but it had transformed into something bittersweet; a deep, desperate longing. He was here now, though, with her, and she wasn’t going to let anything separate them ever again._

_She lay back – what was she laying on? She couldn’t tell. It was soft. She felt something brushing against the lips of her vulva, and knew it was his fingers. She spread her legs open, inviting him in. The strokes became more powerful, moved in deeper, and she felt the first moan escape from her lips._

_“Anakin,” she breathed between gasps. “Anakin. I love you.”_

*

Ahsoka awoke from her dream slowly and reluctantly, a pleasant, hot feeling in her stomach and a distinct wetness between her legs. It took her a moment to make sense of what had happened, and once she did, she collapsed face-first into her mattress and let out a scream of frustration.

“No,” she moaned, her cheeks burning with shame. “No, no, _no_!”

What was wrong with her? Why was _this_ her response to the situation? As if her feelings about Anakin weren’t already confused and complicated enough, _now_ her subconscious had decided to throw this at her too?

She hadn’t seen it coming for a _moment_ before it hit her like a podracer – not least of all because she so rarely found herself attracted to men to begin with, that whenever it _did_ happen she usually dismissed it as a fluke. She’d never considered any of her feelings for Anakin the least bit romantic, or sexual, or _whatever_ this was. He was a teacher. He was a friend. He was maybe even family, though it felt _extremely_ wrong to think about him that way now. He was too old for her anyway, wasn’t he?

No, he wasn’t. Five years. That’s all there was between their ages. It had been a huge gap when she was fourteen, but now that she was an adult, it felt like nothing.

She let out a sigh, trying to calm herself down and think about the situation more rationally. She was in a very difficult position, one with a lot of strong feelings involved that her brain had been trying to process. Translating them into sexual desire for the sake of a dream had seemed to be the most logical way to do it. That was all. The feelings would pass, and until they did, it would do her no good to dwell upon them.

She got up, and checked the time. Twelve standard hours since landing. That was more than enough time for the Empire to come after her if they were going to. She would freshen up, and then head directly to Rebel Base to deliver the holocron.

The holocron. Her eyes passed over it on the table as she headed for the ship’s meagre excuse for a washroom. It preoccupied her thoughts as she went through the motions. She hadn’t yet had the opportunity to open it and see what teachings it might contain. Probably, it would be a good idea to wait until she had returned to Rebel Base to try anything with it, especially seeing how dangerous it had proven to be thus far. But impatience had always been a vice of hers, and by the time she returned to the table, she had made the decision to try her luck.

Ahsoka reached out with her mind, feeling for the internal mechanisms of the device. The holocron rose up, hovering in the air as its separate points rotated. Just like in the temple, it responded to her with an ease she did not expect, and when the holographic figure suddenly flickered on and said, “Hello, Ahsoka, I have been waiting for you,” she jumped and nearly dropped it.

“Apologies for the alarm,” the figure continued. It was a Talid, easily identifiable as such by its muzzle, four arms, and long, white hair. By the looks of it, Ahsoka thought it might be an elderly female. “I have not properly introduced myself. I am the creation of the Dai Bendu monks of Ando Prime, made in the likeness of their Revered Master, Don-La Shar. If it pleases you, you may call me by her name. How may I be of assistance to you?”

“You…” Ahsoka began. “You’re sentient?”

“I have something very similar to an organic definition of sentience, yes,” Don-La Shar replied.

“What teachings do you possess?” Ahsoka asked.

“I hold many teachings of the Dai Bendu concerning the nature of the Force and the philosophy of the Centre.”

Ahsoka wracked her brain, trying to remember what the Jedi Order had told her about the Dai Bendu. She seemed to recall that they were a deeply ancient order, among the very first to study the Force. The Jedi regarded them as their direct predecessors. In fact, if she remembered correctly, the name “Jedi” found its origin in the Bendu words “je” and “dai.”

“So, you’re a Light Side holocron?” she asked.

“I hold many teachings of the Dai Bendu concerning the nature of the Force and the philosophy of the Centre,” Don-La Shar repeated.

Ahsoka frowned. Was she glitching?

“I see you are confused,” Don-La Shar said. “Allow me to explain. The Dai Bendu did not polarise their understanding of the Force the way people began to after the rise of the Sith and the Jedi. The Dai Bendu sought balance in the Force. This is the philosophy of the Centre. I contain teachings regarding both the Light and Dark Sides, and their interactions; how they are balanced in the Cosmos and how they can be balanced within the individual; how they work alongside one another and how they can be used together.”

Ahsoka’s eyes went wide. The Jedi Order had certainly never taught her _that_ about the Dai Bendu. In fact, they’d never taught her that it was possible for a Force User to be anything but one or the other. Quite the opposite. The teachings she’d been given about the Dark Side was that it must be avoided and blocked out at all costs; that even the slightest bit of leeway would lead to nothing but complete corruption.

“It’s possible for the Force to be used in that way?” Ahsoka asked.

“Yes,” replied the holocron. “In fact, to do it any other way is ultimately self-destructive.”

Ahsoka’s mind was racing. The Jedi had lied to her. The Jedi had lied to Anakin. _Anakin_. Did he know? Did he know that the Sith weren’t the only option left to him?

“Wait,” Ahsoka said suddenly. “You said you were waiting for me?”

“I felt both your approach and Lord Vader’s,” Don-La Shar said. “He is not ready to receive my teachings. But you are. And so I ensured that you would be the one to find me.”

“ _You_ caused the tunnel to cave in,” Ahsoka said.

“I did.”

“Is he…” Ahsoka said, “is he alright?”

“He is fine,” Don-La Shar replied. “Very annoyed, but fine.”

He was fine. She felt her shoulder relax as a smile tugged at her features, but she was quickly overcome by other anxieties. “What do I do now?”

The question had been rhetorical, but the holocron answered it anyway.

“You must complete your Force training,” Don-La Shar replied. “You must bring Balance to the Galaxy.”

“What do you mean?” Ahsoka asked.

“You are well-versed in the ways of the Light Side,” Don-La Shar said, “but your Dark Side training is severely lacking.”

Ahsoka’s heart sank.

“I have to become a Sith?”

“No,” Don-La Shar said. “You have to _learn_ from a Sith. Learning without becoming – that will be your challenge.”

Ahsoka felt sick. For all her recent revelations about the Force and Balance, the idea of interacting with the Dark Side still made her deeply uneasy.

“I need to get you back to Rebel Base,” Ahsoka said. This was all far too sudden. She at least needed some time to think through her options.

“No,” said Don-La Shar. “You must fulfil your destiny.”

“Can’t my destiny wait a few days?” Ahsoka asked.

“It cannot.”

Ahsoka let out a sigh, sitting back on her bed and letting her face fall into her hands. She sat there in silence for a moment, and then abruptly got up and headed for the communicator.

“This is Agent Fulcrum reporting to Rebel Base,” she spoke into it once she made contact.

“Agent Fulcrum! We were becoming worried,” the voice on the other end said. “Have you located the item?”

“I have it here with me,” Ahsoka said, and took a deep breath. “But I’m afraid I can’t bring it back to you. There’s something very important I have to do. I won’t be returning to Rebel Base.”

The voice on the other end was silent for a moment. “Would you care to tell us what?”

“I can’t,” Ahsoka said. “You’ll have to trust me that it’s for the good of the galaxy.”

Another moment of silence. “You have not let us down yet, Fulcrum. May the Force be with you.”

“Thank you,” Ahsoka said. “Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Relocate the base at your nearest possible convenience,” she said. “And… don’t tell me where to.”

She turned off the communicator before they could voice any protests they might have, dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath her feet. Satisfied that it was not reconstructable, she went to retrieve the holocron from the back of the ship.

“Any more wisdom you absolutely need to communicate to me before I do this incredibly stupid thing?” she asked.

“Keep me close to you,” Don-La Shar replied simply.

“That might be difficult for what I have planned,” Ahsoka said, sitting herself in the pilot’s seat and setting the navigator’s coordinates for her next location. “But I’ll try my best.”

She shut the holocron off for now, and powered up the ship. In moments, she had taken off of the planet’s sandy surface, and was hurtling quickly towards the cold void of space.

*

Sometime later, Ahsoka’s ship emerged from hyperspace above a red planet. The world below her was largely volcanic wasteland, and shrouded by a thick, dark layer of soot-filled clouds. It would be quite the change from Ando Prime, she thought. Heat was something she was better at dealing with than cold, however, and if Anakin could walk around it in a black bodysuit, she was sure she would be fine.

She would miss plant life before long, though.

As she neared her destination upon the planet, a voice came in over the intercom.

“You are approaching Fortress Vader,” the voice said. It was robotic, and sounded very bored. “Please identify yourself and your purpose.”

“This is Ahsoka Tano,” she responded, speaking clearly. “Requesting an audience with Lord Vader.”

“Have you arranged such an audience in advance?”

“No.”

“His Lordship is _very_ busy,” the voice said with a sneer. “What makes you think he will agree to meet with you?”

“Oh, he _will_ agree,” Ahsoka said. “Tell him it’s an old friend. Tell him–” She brushed her hand over the holocron sitting next to her. “I have something he wants.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First NSFW bit! It's short and not very kinky, but it'll have to tide y'all over for now 'cause it's gonna be a while before any actual fucking goes down.


	3. Miner Setbacks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The title is a pun.)
> 
> Sorry for the wait, this chapter turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. Vader's pov doesn't come nearly as easily as Ahsoka's does. I'm not as happy with this chapter as I am with the previous ones, so it might get touched-up at some point.
> 
> Anyway, you might notice the fic has some new tags! Some of the pairing tags are probably unnecessary, since they're only mentioned in passing, but I thought I might as well.
> 
> "20 chapters" is just an estimate based on the planned trajectory of the fic.

The last twenty-four hours had not been a good time for Darth Vader. Two Inquisitors were dead. They hadn’t been the best Inquisitors, and he hadn’t been particularly fond of them, but it was still a pain. The person who had killed them had been his old padawan and friend, Ahsoka Tano, who was still alive, and now hated him with an undeniable intensity. What was more, he was certain he would have to kill her sooner or later.

He had tried to steel himself towards that resolve in the mines – that she was an enemy now, and had to be dealt with as such – but the freak earthquake and cave-in had interrupted him before he could act on it. It had been kind of her to give that speech at the end, to try to convince him she still cared for him, but it was clear that that was long gone. He had wanted a moment alone, to grieve by himself.

He had not been given that.

In truth, Vader had not felt alone since he first landed on Ando Prime – even before it, when the craft had begun to malfunction before reaching its intended destination. While the Inquisitors, and later Ahsoka, had been there with him, the feeling had been easy to excuse as synonymous with their company, coupled with whatever strange force phenomenon had dwelt in that place. Once Ahsoka was separated from him, however, it was undeniable that there was some other presence in the mines.

The obvious answer was that it was the holocron, assuming a holocron was really what it had been. Everything about its behaviour was so unusual, and yet that remained the best explanation. Strange as the cryptic voices in the tunnels had been, it had soon turned out that they were not the extent of the holocron’s defensive mechanisms, nor were they the only power it had intended to use upon him.

It hadn’t been long after Vader had accepted that his attempts to move the cave-in rubble were fruitless, when he heard the voice again.

“ _Anakin! Anakin! Help!_ ”

It was more urgent than before, and still in a perfect imitation of Ahsoka. He knew it wasn’t her, of course. Besides the fact that the holocron had tried this trick already, it was distinctly coming from further back in the tunnels.

At that moment, however, further back in the tunnels was the only direction he had left to go. And there was still some small part of him that heard her desperate cries for him, and weighed the pros and cons of it being a trap versus Ahsoka being in danger, and concluded that Ahsoka was more important. It was an entirely illogical conclusion, not least of all because he had recently decided that Ahsoka would have to die, and it should have been a relief to think that he might not have to do it himself. All the same, he turned around and headed in the direction of the voice.

What he found was Ahsoka.

He stopped in his tracks. For an instant, he wondered with a panic if he had been right, and she had been calling for him after all. The instant passed quickly. This was not the adult Ahsoka he had walked with down these tunnels earlier – this Ahsoka was still fifteen years old, as though she had been plucked straight from his memories of the Clone Wars. She was sitting against the wall of the tunnel, arms hugging her legs to her chest, her face downcast.

No, not the tunnel – he was not in the tunnels anymore. He had no idea when his surroundings had shifted, but the place he saw now was not the mines of Ando Prime, but a room in the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

His whole body tensed at the realisation. He did not want to be here. No matter how much he tried to reason with himself, assure himself that he was not really there, that this was just another one of the holocron’s tricks, it did nothing to quell the spike of rage and pain he felt at the sight of the place that had once been his home.

The false Ahsoka continued to take no notice of him, remaining completely unaware of either his presence or of the turmoil he was stewing in. She had a sad look in her eyes, Vader saw, like she very much wanted to cry but could not succeed in making herself do so.

“Snips?”

Vader’s head snapped at the sudden voice. It was a painfully familiar voice, and he recognised it immediately, because it was _his_ voice. He – or the person he had once been, Anakin – entered the room, and sat down next to Ahsoka, watching her face carefully.

“Are you okay?” Anakin asked. “I know you’ve just been through a lot. If you want to talk about it, I’m here for you.”

When Ahsoka continued to say nothing, he ventured, “It’s Steela, isn’t it?”

Ahsoka let out a deep, shaky sigh, and Vader realised with a growing horror that he remembered this conversation.

“Anakin,” she said quietly, “do you remember that time I got… captured by those Trandoshans and left on a forest moon so they could hunt me for sport?”

“I remember,” Anakin said, unable to keep the darker note out of his voice.

“I didn’t tell you at the time,” Ahsoka said, “but… there was this girl who was there. Kalifa. I didn’t know her for very long, but… I _liked_ her.”

Ahsoka smirked at her own childish choice of words.

“And she died in my arms,” Ahsoka said. “I couldn’t save her. And I couldn’t save Steela.”

“You liked her too, didn’t you?” Anakin asked. It wasn’t really a question.

“Yeah,” Ahsoka admitted.

“I’m sorry, Snips,” Anakin said. “It’s always hard to lose someone you care about, no matter how long you’ve known them.”

He put an arm around her shoulders.

“You won’t always lose the girls you like, though, even if it feels that way for now,” Anakin said, giving her a slight smile. “You’ll find someone. I promise.”

Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought Jedi were forbidden from having relationships.”

“Nah, you can still have relationships,” Anakin said with a grin. “You just have to be sneaky about it.”

“Like you and Padme?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Senator Amidala and I are just very good friends.”

“Riiiiight.”

Ahsoka rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling now.

“Anyway, this might be stupid,” Anakin said, “but I honestly thought it was Lux you were having feelings for.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Ahsoka cringed. “I think I had feelings for both of them? I don’t know. Emotions are hard.”

“They are,” Anakin agreed. “Good to know I wasn’t totally off the mark, though.”

“You weren’t,” Ahsoka said. “As grieved as I am to admit it.”

“Hey, there are more embarrassing people you could like than Lux Bonteri.”

“Name _one_.”

“Jar Jar Binks.”

“Yikes! Forget I asked.”

The scene faded from around Vader, along with Anakin and Ahsoka’s laughter, and he was left once more in the deep silence of the mines.

“Why are you doing this?” Vader demanded the empty tunnels.

The tunnels echoed the question back at him.

Not long after, Vader had felt the holocron’s presence vanish. It was a very sudden development, and at that moment Vader knew he had lost. Ahsoka had found it. That meant that the defensive mechanisms had turned off, but it also meant that the holocron was effectively beyond his grasp. At that point, he didn’t care. The holocron had turned out to be far more trouble than it was worth, as far as he was concerned. He had spent the next several hours finding his way out of the mines, and then making his slow trudge back to the ship. The ship, thankfully, was now in perfect working order, just has he had expected, so he’d gone directly back to Mustafar, holed himself up in his private quarters, and had been there ever since.

He had instructed his administrative droid to tell anyone who came looking for him that he was very busy and did not want to be disturbed. In actuality, he was finding it impossible to do anything. None of his projects seemed at all interesting to him. Even his research into resurrection felt uninspiring. He’d tried to sleep, hoping it would make him feel better. Even submerged in the bacta tank, he was unable to sleep. In the end, he spent most of his time alternating between sitting perfectly still for minutes at a time and pacing around his rooms.

He hadn’t the slightest idea how much time had passed when the administrative droid’s voice came over the intercom.

“You have a visitor, Lord Vader,” she said.

He felt a spike of anger, and responded, “I told you to say I was busy.”

“I did,” replied the droid. “But she insisted that you would want to see her anyway. She says she is an old friend of yours, and has something you want. What’s more, despite my efforts to keep her away, she has already landed and is waiting for you in the lobby.”

A chill ran through him. “Did she give a name?”

“Ahsoka Tano, my lord.”

 _Ahsoka_. Ahsoka was here? Why? He felt lightheaded, though that could have been from the lack of sleep.

“I will be there shortly,” he said. Rather than going to meet her immediately, however, he found himself standing still, deep in thought.

Had she reconsidered his offer? It seemed extremely unlikely, but he could think of no other reason for her sudden arrival. He pondered it for a few minutes, but it was a fruitless effort – besides, he supposed, he could just as easily ask her himself.

The walk towards the fortress’ entrance area had never felt so long, and yet he dreaded the conclusion. At the end of the hallway, the door slid open, and there she was, seated on one of the benches with a casualness that Vader could sense masked a great unease. She had been staring at something on the opposite wall, but once he entered her head snapped to him, her whole body stiffening for an instance as a look of alarm crossed her face. She quickly settled back into her previous stance, replacing her expression with a more guarded, cold look.

“Ahsoka,” he said, by way of greeting. He found he didn’t know what else to say.

Without a word, Ahsoka got to her feet and approached him, her head held high and expression still unreadable. When she reached him, she held out her hand in offering, clutching the holocron.

Vader stared at it for a moment, utterly bemused. Then slowly, he reached out and took it.

“Why?” he asked.

“There are things in there that I think you need to see,” Ahsoka said.

Vader looked down at the holocron again. It was very unusually shaped, which fit just about every other experience he had had with it thus far.

“Surely, you didn’t come here just to give valuable information to your enemies?” he asked.

Ahsoka was silent for a moment, and then she said, “No. But I want you to look at it first.”

She said nothing else, and so Vader decided he would have to be satisfied with her cryptic words.

“A-12,” Darth Vader said, addressing the administrative droid.

“Yes, Lord Vader?” the droid responded.

“Escort Ahsoka to the guest room,” he said. “And see to it that it’s well-guarded.”

“Very well, Lord Vader,” A-12 said, and directed her out of the room. Ahsoka didn’t seem particularly pleased about being conducted like this, but she complied without complaint.

And then she was gone, and he was alone in the room. For all his fretting and anticipation, the meeting had been short, and it had brought him neither comfort, nor answers. He looked at the holocron in his hands, and, just as he had expected, recognised that same presence from the mines. It was fainter now that it was not trying to torment him, but the familiarity brought on a sense of unease in Vader. He remembered all too well what the holocron had been capable of, how it had looked within him and seen his memories, his thoughts, his feelings, all laid bare for it to pick through and use as it pleased. His curiosity was stronger, however, and he swiftly withdrew to his quarters.

It took some time for the holocron to open, but when it did, a small, full-body hologram of a Talid woman popped into view, eyeing him over with a disapproving look.

“I see now what Ahsoka meant,” the holocron said with a sigh. “I told her you were not ready for my teachings, but it seems she believes otherwise. Very well. You may call me Don-La Shar. What can I do for you, Darth Vader?”

“Why is Ahsoka here?” he demanded.

“Because I sent her here for training,” the holocron replied.

That was certainly unexpected.

“So, you are a Sith holocron?” Vader asked.

Don-La Shar let out another sigh. “You Jedi and Sith are so exhausting. Everything always has to be one or the other with you.”

“I don’t have time for your games,” Vader said. “Why have you sent Ahsoka to me, if you are not a Sith holocron?”

“I hold the teachings of the Dai Bendu, of the way the Force was understood in the old days, before the Sith and the Jedi and their polarised Force agendas,” Don-La Shar said. “Dark and Light are not opposite sides in a cosmic struggle. They aren’t even opposite ends of a spectrum. They are two parts of the same whole, and no Force user’s training is complete until they understand both and know how to use them together. It is so like both your Orders to look at a grey Force and see only black and white.”

Vader was deathly quiet for a good minute.

“I don’t believe you,” he said tersely.

“Suit yourself,” Don-La Shar said. “But that is why Ahsoka is here. So, now that we have established that I was right about you not being ready, would you please return me to Ahsoka?”

Vader turned off the holocron without another word. His mind was blank, but his body was seething with a quiet, bubbling rage. He spent the next hour much the same as he had done for the past day – alone, in silence, his head full of thoughts but unable to understand any of them. At long last, he headed for Ahsoka’s room.

The room was flanked by several security droids, who parted for him as he approached. The door slid open, and he stepped in. Ahsoka was sitting cross-legged on the bed, where she had evidently been meditating. At his arrival, however, she opened a single eye, and regarded him from the corner of her vision.

“Lord Vader?” she said, in an innocuous tone that was somehow still mocking.

He tossed her the holocron, and she moved quickly, snatching it out of the air before getting to her feet, looking at him apprehensively.

“I know why you are here,” Vader said.

“And?” Ahsoka said, sounding cautiously hopeful.

“I will train you,” he said, “in the ways of the Sith. I hope in doing so, you will come to see things as I do, to revel in the Dark Side.”

Ahsoka looked disappointed, but she nodded in agreement, turning the holocron over in her hand.

Vader turned to exit the room, but stopped in the doorway, and looked back for a moment.

“Ahsoka,” he said, “some old teachings die for a reason.”

With that, he left.


	4. Mustafar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait!!

Ahsoka was familiar enough with the story of Mustafar. Most people were familiar with it, usually as some form of cautionary tale – against messing with the natural world, misusing the power of the Force, or refusing to let go of the past. The planet had once been a lush, green world, before an ancient Force user, Lady Corvax, had tried to resurrect her dead husband. In doing so, she threw the planet out of orbit and transformed it into the volcanic hellscape it was today. The place where she had lived and carried out her doomed experiments was now a Dark Side locus, and it was this site over which Darth Vader had built his fortress. It wasn’t just the locus, however – the whole planet was imbued with the power of the Dark Side from millennia of Sith trying to carry on Corvax’s misguided work.

Ahsoka knew all this. She had even been to Mustafar before, during the Clone Wars, and had felt for herself the presence of the Dark Side on the planet. Yet somehow, neither knowing it nor having experienced it in years past had prepared her for the intensity she felt as she sat alone in her prison cell, wondering what was going to happen next.

It _was_ a prison cell. A nice cell, a _very_ nice cell – an en suite cell, even – but if she was going to be held in there by guards all hours of the day, then a prison cell was still what it was.

She knew that she’d come here voluntarily, and she wasn’t sure exactly what else she had expected to happen in doing so. Darth Vader was still Darth Vader, even if he was also Anakin. It wouldn’t be nearly so easy to get him back.

 _Because you’re not enough_ , a voice in her head whispered to her. _You’re not enough incentive for him to change his ways. He wants you around only if he can convince you to see his side, so he can use you to further his ends. But if you disagree with him, he won’t try to understand. He doesn’t love you enough to question his own motivations._

Ahsoka tried to push the voice aside, but it continued to nag at her. She knew that in all likelihood, it was only the influence of the Dark Side poisoning her mind. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was right.

 _He doesn’t love me_ , she thought. _Not like I love him._

And there it was again – that deep, desperate longing in the pit of her stomach that Ahsoka had tried so hard to deny earlier. Now very much awake, it was harder to excuse it as an inconsequential by-product of her unconscious mind. She would just have to accept that, one way or another, she had developed feelings for her former master that went far beyond friendship.

Well, not former anymore, she supposed. As his new Sith apprentice, he was very much her master again. She might have considered this an impediment to a relationship, if it weren’t for the fact that, student or partner, friend or enemy, she was certain that Anakin could _never_ see her as a potential romantic prospect anyway, could never love her in that sense.

_Or maybe at all._

She groaned, mentally fighting off those thoughts as they resurfaced. Her struggle against them only ever made them feel stronger.

She thought about meditating again. Her first attempt had had limited success. When she sat still and opened her mind to the Force, she became acutely aware of the suffocating darkness she shared her space with. Like a lone traveller huddled around a feeble campfire in the pitch-black wilderness, the Dark Side surrounded her on all sides, seemingly endless and impenetrable, leering at her pathetic attempts to find warmth, and promising hidden monsters.

She would have to face it eventually, she knew. That was why she was here. But for now, she was certain that if she opened herself up to the shadows just a bit, they would flood in and extinguish any light they could find. There was a trick to it. There had to be, if what Don-La Shar said was true.

Anakin didn’t think it was possible. That much was clear. He _had_ opened himself up, and been swallowed whole by the Dark Side, just like the Jedi Order had told them would happen. Inevitable. Once you started down that path, there was no turning back. Yoda was fond of saying something to that effect.

Maybe Anakin was right. Maybe they were all right. Maybe she had latched onto a debunked teaching from an extinct order, out of the hope that it would bring Anakin back.

She looked over at her bedside table, where the holocron lay, glowing dimly. With a sigh, she opened it up, and Don-La Shar flickered to life.

“How do you do it?” Ahsoka demanded.

“You are going to need to be more specific,” Don-La Shar said nonchalantly.

“The Dark Side,” Ahsoka said. “How do you interact with it without letting it consume you?”

“Ah,” the hologram said. “There is a simple enough answer to that question, though it is not necessarily as easy to put into practice.”

“ _Yes_?” Ahsoka said, failing not to sound aggravated.

“Patience, young one.”

“You know I’m an adult, right?”

“Most beings are young when compared to me,” Don-La Shar replied. “The answer is fear. You must never approach the Dark Side with fear.”

“That’s it?” Ahsoka asked disbelievingly.

“It is not as easy as it sounds,” Don-La Shar said. “Fear is a difficult instinct to set aside, because it is there to protect you from potential dangers. But the Dark Side is like a wild animal. It will sense your fear, and it will respond aggressively. If you want to master it without it mastering you, you must approach it confidently.”

“The Jedi always told me that fear was a path to the Dark Side,” Ahsoka said.

“Yes,” Don-La Shar said. “And this is exactly why they believe that – because those who approach the Dark Side with fear in their hearts are inevitably lost to it. It has become a belief amongst the Sith as well, because they no longer know any other way of interacting with the Dark Side. That is how the philosophy of Balance was lost.”

“I see,” Ahsoka said, more to herself than Don-La.

“I sense hesitance in you,” Don-La said.

“I feel I should try now,” Ahsoka said. “Before my training starts, and I risk falling too far to the Dark Side. But… I don’t know if I’m ready. If I don’t do it now, though, then when will I get another chance?”

“I will be here,” Don-La Shar said. “Close your eyes, relax. Clear your mind of fear and judgement, just let yourself be.”

Ahsoka sighed, and moved into a cross-legged position, doing as Don-La Shar instructed. She breathed in deeply, and let it out, stilling her thoughts. She tried not to think about where she was, or why she was there, about Anakin, about the conflicting and complicated emotions that had filled her mind and body for the last day or so. It wasn’t easy, but at last she felt that she had reached an acceptable level of calm.

“Now open your mind – just a little, slowly,” Don-La Shar’s voice instructed.

Very gradually, like she was manually sliding a door open just a crack, Ahsoka opened up her mind and gazed at the darkness around her. She regarded it neutrally, breathing slowly and keeping herself calm. Then she reached out ever so slightly, and brushed against it.

A tremor ran through her, and the emotions twisted in her stomach, and Ahsoka’s breath quickened.

“Don’t panic,” Don-La Shar said. “But don’t fight your feelings, either. Just hold them, acknowledge them, accept them.”

Ahsoka took several deep, long breaths, without breaking her contact with the Dark Side. Her pulse slowed, returning to normal. She felt as though she were harbouring a small pool of darkness inside her now, without enough of an opening to the source that she was at risk of it overflowing. It was intense, that was undeniable, but it wasn’t unpleasant, not as long as she stayed calm. It sent feelings of warmth through her body. Warmth. She hadn’t expected that.

Reaching within, she found her connection to the Light Side, and held that as well, trying to find a balance. But she miscalculated. The darkness flickered, and she realised with dismay that it was going out, and reached for it again.

Another miscalculation. The dam broke and the Dark Side flooded in. She felt all of her emotions all at once – the pain, the betrayal, the fury, the longing, the endless sadness – twisted into some monstrous, violent force within her. She drew back like she’d touched hot metal, and her eyes snapped open as she took a sudden sharp breath, gasping for air. 

“You pushed too far,” Don-La Shar said. “That will not do. You must try again. Still your–”

“No,” Ahsoka said, getting to her feet. Her whole body was trembling. “I can’t do it. I can’t.”

Don-La was about to speak, when there was a sharp knock on the door. Ahsoka almost jumped at the sudden interruption, but with a shaky voice, she called out, “Yes?”

The door slid open, and a droid stood there. It looked at her and said, “Darth Vader has requested your company in the dining hall in one hour.”

 _Vader_. She took a moment to calm herself.

“Please inform Darth Vader that I will be joining him,” Ahsoka replied. “However, I would request a change of clothes. I only have the ones on me and I have been in them for far too long.”

“Very well,” the droid said, and the door slid shut again.

“You will need to try again eventually,” Don-La Shar said.

“I know,” Ahsoka said. She turned her off.

About fifteen minutes later, the droid returned with a folded blue gown. Ahsoka accepted it, and looked it over as the door to her room slid shut once again. It complimented the blue markings on her montrals and lekku, she noted, without clashing too much with her skin tone, and was of an unmistakable Naboo design. This thought was quickly followed by the realisation that she knew who this dress had belonged to.

The fact that Anakin kept Padme’s clothes around wasn’t as much of a surprise to her as it would have been for most people. She didn’t know the full details of the relationship they had shared, thought she certainly had her suspicions. It was just like Anakin to hold onto something like that.

As it turned out, the dress fit her well enough, even if it wasn’t the sort of thing she usually wore. She was about as tall as Padme was before she died, after all – montrals excluded. However, she was also considerably more toned than the politician had been, so it still wasn’t a perfect fit. It was uncomfortable in other ways, too. Uncomfortable because she was wearing the clothes of a dead woman of whom she had been a good friend, and uncomfortable because she would be wearing the dress of a woman Anakin had loved in front of him, when her own feelings were still so confusing.

Not that she thought Anakin had considered the implications in any respect. In all likelihood, Padme’s clothes were the only thing he had on hand. Nobody else seemed to live in the fortress, other than the droids and the Imperial garrison she had seen stationed around the perimeter on her way in. The latter didn’t even live in the fortress proper. Within his actual home, Vader seemed to prefer the company of artificial lifeforms, even as security.

It seemed a lonely life to Ahsoka, but then, as she reflected, she had also lived very much alone for the past few years.

A minute to the hour, there was a knock on the door again, and the droid came to lead her to dinner. Her guards joined her, of course. They had taken her lightsabres before they put her in her room, something Ahsoka was still sore about. She could see them at their sides as they walked. The thought that she could reach out and take them back quicker than they could stop her crossed her mind, but it wasn’t worth the trouble.

She still felt emotionally fragile, which she wasn’t happy about. She couldn’t risk being emotionally fragile in front of Anakin.

It wasn’t a long walk to the dining hall, but it was a dark one. Fortress Vader seemed to be largely devoid of major light sources, which seemed strange to Ahsoka, since it was situated on a planet that spent most of its time under heavy cloud cover. The colours of the walls didn’t help much, either.

“Vader’s really going hard on the Dark Side aesthetic, huh?” Ahsoka said to one of the droids. The droid did not respond.

They arrived before a large pair of doors, which opened up into a room. Ahsoka squinted. The lights inside weren’t unusually bright, but compared to the hallway she’d just come out of, they were a bit of a shock.

This was clearly the dining room. There was a great, long table in the centre, surrounded almost entirely by empty chairs. The exception was the head of the table, directly in front of her on the far side of the room, where Vader had clearly seated himself for dramatic affect. Ahsoka decided not to be impressed by it.

“Run short on the electricity bill for the rest of the building?” Ahsoka quipped, making her way over to him. The droids left her at the door, but she didn’t need further directions – there was a single plate sitting on the table, before the chair to Vader’s left.

“We will be receiving a guest for dinner,” Vader said.

Ahsoka raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was a rather late invitation, so don’t trouble yourself waiting for her. Please, eat. You must be hungry.”

She _was_ hungry, and the food before her looked infinitely better than anything she’d had in a long time. Still, she didn’t feel entirely comfortable, sitting in that vast, almost empty dining hall, the only one with food before her. Not with Vader watching her so closely, waiting to discern her reaction.

She ate all the same, slowly and self-consciously. She lasted about a minute before the silence became unbearable.

“So when does my training begin?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“Tomorrow morning,” Darth Vader replied. “I will expect to see you in the courtyard after breakfast.”

He paused a moment, then said, “I suspect you won’t need as much training as you think. Already, you are stronger in the Dark Side than you know.”

A chill ran through Ahsoka at those words. She took another bite of food.

“And I assume armed guards will be there to escort me,” she said, not without venom.

“We shall see,” Vader responded.

“How much longer am I going to be your prisoner?” she demanded.

“Until you’ve shown you can be trusted.”

“What are you afraid I’ll do?” Ahsoka exclaimed. “I’m not going to run away. I have no means of sharing information with the Rebel Alliance. I’m hardly going to _kill_ you.”

“I don’t know any of that,” Vader responded. Ahsoka was surprised at how much it hurt to hear him say that. “You’ve made your stance in regards to the Empire, and to myself, clear enough. Your only reason for being here now seems to be because you are suffering under the delusion that you can… _save_ me from myself with your newly discovered lost Force teachings. Once you realise you are wrong, I have no way of knowing how you will react.”

Ahsoka placed her fork down beside her plate. She was trembling again, just like she had after the failed meditation. Worse still, she could feel tears welling up inside her. No. She would _not_ start crying. Not here, not now, and _not_ in front of Darth Vader.

She took in a deep breath, and counted down from ten. She took another deep breath. The first tear slid down her cheek.

It was a lost cause, after that. She let her face fall into her hands and sobbed over her dinner plate, years of pent-up rage and sadness spilling out. She felt embarrassed and stupid, but the dam had broken, and for the time being, she simply couldn’t stop it.

It was half a minute before she felt a hand on her shoulder, and heard Vader’s breathing next to her.

“Ahsoka… Snips… I’m sorry,” he said, with a softness she hadn’t thought him still capable of. “I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”

She _wanted_ to stop crying, but her body had betrayed her. Instead, she flung her arms around him, burying her face into his shoulder as she continued to sob deeply. It wasn’t comfortable, hugging him – not with the suit on – but she held tight anyway. At first, Vader froze at the contact, but then slowly, he brought a hand up and gently stroked the back of her head.

“ _Lord Vader?_ ”

A-12’s voice sounded over the intercom, causing Ahsoka to jump back in alarm. Anakin coughed, and headed back to his seat, where he pressed a button sitting on the table and responded. “Yes?”

“ _Your guest has arrived_.”

“Excellent. Send her in.”

The door slid open. Ahsoka had been drying her eyes on her napkin while sniffling quietly, but when she saw who had entered, she jumped to her feet.

A thin-faced Mirialan woman with yellowish-green skin stepped into the room, golden eyes going wide as they rested on Ahsoka’s face.

“You know each other already, of course,” Vader said, “but Ahsoka, I would like to formally introduce you to the Imperial Inquisition’s own Seventh Sister.”


End file.
